Catching Up with Stacey Nelson
Wednesday, January 27, 2010 | Softball
Stacey Nelson, the former University of Florida pitcher, has been keeping busy since the end of the 2009 season. She graduated in December and has been asked to play for the U.S. National Team for the second year in a row. Nelson will also be taking her softball skills to the other side of the globe when she plays for a professional Japanese team this year.
Nelson received a degree in philosophy, which she hopes will help her as she continues her academic career at law school. Although she is deferring a year to play softball in Japan, Nelson still wants to work with international humanitarian law. Specifically, she is interested in children who are forced to serve in armies and the laws that govern unethical warfare.
“Hopefully I can work at the International Criminal Court and help to prosecute the people responsible for that,” she said.
Nelson is also trying to make local high school students aware of these issues by starting the Stacey Nelson's Get Educated, Get Rewarded! Scholarship Program. Nelson visited area high schools to give presentations on the humanitarian crisis in Northern Uganda and then challenged students to write an essay about the present state of this conflict.
“I am extending this as an opportunity for them to get involved, not only with this issue, but with other issues around the globe,” she said.
Nelson will reward the winner with a $500 scholarship and hopes that she has sparked awareness and curiosity about these issues.
Recently, Nelson has been training in California to prepare to depart for Japan in March. She will be playing for the Honda Motorcars team and will live in Tochigi, a city outside of Tokyo. This summer, she will have a three month break to return home to play with Team USA and then returns to Japan in August to finish up the season.
Japan was also where Nelson traveled in December to participate in a Japanese game show.
“It's a 24-hour telethon that they love it in Japan. People call in and it raises millions of dollars every year. They get a bunch of Japanese comedians, celebrities and baseball players to try to hit off of me,” she said.
Serving as an alternate on Team USA, Nelson hopes she will once again get the chance to represent the Red, White and Blue. Last summer, she earned three wins for the Americans as the team won the Canada Cup, the KFC World Cup and the Japan Cup. She pitched 23 innings while striking out 15 and allowing 19 hits. The former Gator allowed only two earned runs to bring her ERA to 0.61 in international play.
After her season in Japan, Nelson hopes to take a much anticipated trip to Kenya.
Although Nelson will be focusing on school once this year is over, she isn't ruling out softball.
“I always joke that I don't know enough about softball to coach a whole team; I just know pitching,” she said. “I would be interested in giving pitching lessons. My eyes light up when there is a little girl with a question.”
